THE VOLUNTEER QUESTION.
A LETTER from a gallant officer of considerable experience and a good soldier, who takes his profession in earnest, has come under our notice, and enables us to return to the charge on the Volunteer question. Nobody has come forward to show that, on the supposition of an unforeseen invasion, we have in the country an adequate military force to meet and repel the invaders before they could have in- flicted incalculable damage on the nation. Even if it could be shown that we have an adequate force, we should still contend that we ought to have ready, to our hands such an overwhelming multitude of men skilled in the use of arms as would make it im- possible that any rational Sovereign should entertain for one mo- ment the idea of invasion; and to make it certain that destruction would instantly engulf any Sovereign irrational enough to venture upon the enterprise of warring with an armed nation at its hearth and in its home. It is the chance of success offered by the un- military education of our countrymen, and the smallness of our regular troops and Militia, which keeps alive the apprehension of a descent. We are all conscious that the thing is possible, though not probable. If we had made it impossible,—and it is within our power to do so,—we should cease to discuss the matter. On this question, at present, we trust in Providence, but neglect the other half of the maxim. The consciousness that our powder is not dry is the source of our periodical alarms.
Now the question of national defence, regarding the naval half as provided for, is the question of Volunteer armaments. We can never have regular troops enough ; since we have abolished the Militia ballot, we cannot rely on the Militia. Those two facts are demonstrated by every day events. We did not raise the number of Regulars voted by Parliament during the late war. The state of the Militia is a subject of perpetual oomplaint. The only resource we have left is to be found in Volunteers. The question is how can we get them ?
Three weeks ago we submitted in outline a plan for raising a corps of Volunteers. Our proposal is that young men should be invited to enrol themselves in regiments: that they should find their own arms, uniform, and accoutrements, that they should be trained and instructed in rifle practice on leisure days—their duty coming in the shape of healthful recreation, all the more healthful because it has a noble purpose—and that once a year they should be embodied, and do duty like regular soldiers for a given time. We ventured to hope that 20,000 men willing to volunteer on these terms could be formed in huge London alone. We have metwith only one objection to this scheme—that the men could not be raised, and if raised could not be kept together without more stimulant than they would be likely to get. To this we answer that no- thing short of an honest attempt to raise the men can show whether all military and patriotic fire is dead in us or not ; whether we have become a nation of shopkeepers in reality ; whether we have lost the sense that every man is morally bound not only to defend his country, but to be prepared to defend it ; whether the doctrine of the division of labour is so supreme that we are willing to delegate to hirelings the defence of the lives and honour of our mothers and daughters, of our towns and home- steads, and the vindication of our boast that we are a great and powerful nation. 'We do not believe that those noble and patri- otic sentiments which have made England great, have died out. And if not, if every man is ready to flight for his country's inde- pendence, will it not be strange, should it prove that none or few are willing to master the weapons and acquire the art of defen- sive warfare ? It is because we believe the martial virtues of the British race are latent not extinct, that they need only to be roused by those who have the power to rouse them, that we have ventured to suggest a plan for invoking the antique 'virtuesof our race and arming their possessors with the additional weapons to be found in the armoury of warlike science. The youth who formed the Volunteers would gain hardly less than the country. They would gain health, a manly courage, the chivalrous feeling of com- radeship, self-reliance, habits of intelligent obedience. Their time and money would be well invested in an enterprise that would yield so rich a return. The country would gain absolute eecurity, and its moral power in Europe would be doubled. The military critic to whom we referred, while thinking that we overestimate the value of 'volunteers, admits that a national -corps would be highly useful in giving a military turn to a com- munity which threatens to become enervated by too much absorp- tion in commercial life. This is true. A volunteer corps, raised on our principle, would afford a military outlet for the exact class who can neither enter the regular Army nor join the Militia. Their position, their main business in life, would, as our officer remarks, prevent them from being rivals to the Line or the Mili- tia, in recruiting. Theywould not, he feelingly says, desert, nor enter the Line as privates like Militiamen ; so that they might soon become a better corps that the Militia. For our parts we cannot see why intelligent young men, drilled every week, prac- tised in the science of musketry, well trained in the simpler evo- lutions, could not be made at least to approximate pretty closely in the excellence of their discipline, in perfect reliance upon each other, to any but the crack regiments of the Line. But since all military critics, with the late Sir Charles Napier at their head, tell us that volunteers can never equal regulars in discipline, we must bow to their superior judgment, only asking for a fair trial of what can be done with Volunteers. Whether we have Volun- teers or not we can see no objection to the capital proposal of Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Gordon that we should return to the good old practice of our ancestors, institute rifle clubs, give state encouragement in the shape of prizes for the best shots, and thus make the rifle of our day take the place of the bow of our forefathers. Whatever may be done or left undone, the nation will never be secure until it is again accustomed to the use of arms.
The rifle match is a sport that might some day rival the rather degenerate race of Epsom or Newmarket in interest and popular- ity as well as utility.
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